Journyx Project Management Blog

IT manager Vince Delperdang’s environmental science degree is well suited to the era of global warming — especially in light of a prediction by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that power consumption in data centers will double over the next four years unless companies become more energy efficient.

In a report issued to Congress this month, the EPA called on IT managers to adopt best practices for managing power usage, install new energy-saving technologies and make going green a priority. Otherwise, they will continue contributing to global emissions problems, the EPA said.

“IT is just a complete burden on the environment,” said Delperdang, who manages IT operations at O’Donnell/Atkins Co., a real estate brokerage firm in Irvine, Calif. The burden he speaks of also includes other aspects of IT, such as the solvents used in manufacturing and the mercury built into chips.

Delperdang’s combined interest in computers and the environment has sparked his interest in reducing IT’s power consumption. Unlike many data centers, his is metered so that he can measure how much energy different technologies use. When Delperdang moved off of four direct-attached storage systems to a storage-area network from Pillar Data Systems Inc., the meters enabled him to track power usage levels, so he knows he was able to triple storage capacity and add new servers without consuming more energy.

Read more at ComputerWorld.